Magical Mystery Tour
by Aoife-x
Summary: ""Mum." It is a simple word - one which she hasn't had much of an opportunity to hear said to her by her own daughter - and one which carries the whole world with it. It tells her that Eve is desperate." - Nikki/Eve, Nikki/Vix, Nikki/Stuart & other pairings.
1. Chapter 1

_This is sort of loosely set around the time of Series 9/Episode 16 - although elements may not make sense exactly at this timeframe; let's call it artistic license! Title song is "Magical Mystery Tour" by The Beatles - Beatles albums will feature a lot in this! Enjoy & review :) Aoife x_

* * *

"And so, from this, what can we deduce about the relationship between Beatrice and Benedict?"

There was silence from Year 10 at this question - Nicki very much doubted that at least a third of the class had actually read the play, let alone made the notes she'd told them to - but, of course, being Nicki, she wasn't about to give up, was she?

It was a Friday in mid-April now, and spring's sunshine had finally broken through the grey clouds that had given the town of Greenock nothing but showers over the past few weeks. Eve was coming to stay with her for the weekend at her flat, and Nicki had been distracted all day - she never thought that she'd understand that "bond" between mother and daughter, but perhaps they were finally beginning to get there. In an odd way, it was almost like having a sister who she could talk to - when she'd broken up with Vix, she'd spent nearly three hours on the phone to her daughter, who'd informed her that she was "a bit mad, sometimes... well, actually, quite often," but that she loved her nonetheless.

"Liam, any ideas?" Nicki asked in sheer desperation, sighing as the boy almost jumped out of his skin when asked to provide any kind of answer, "Right, seeing as none of you have actually bothered to make notes, I suggest that you make them now, or in detention with me next week until you finish." she said, to groans from all her students, as she sat at her desk and took out the 18th birthday card she'd bought for Eve, along with her old navy fountain pen, and began to write, the nib of the pen scratching the card and leaving inky word trails;

_"Eve,_  
_Happy 18th Birthday, darling - have a fantastic day. Don't do anything I wouldn't do (that should leave you a fair bit of leeway) on your first "legal" night out."_ she wrote in her scrawly, looped handwriting, stopping dead as her class began to shout, standing up and pointing out the window; looks of horror etched on their faces.

"Oh my God, did you see that?"

"Miss! Miss! Someone's just been run over!" screamed a Year 10 who Nicki knew to be incredibly melodramatic - "run over", to her, was probably more like walking into a parked car - and so it was that Nicki sauntered lazily over to the window, one hand in the pocket of her dark jeans as her classroom descended into total chaos. Nothing could possibly have prepared her for the sight she was about to take in.

Squinting out of the scratched, battered window of her classroom, through the corridor and into the sunlight, she saw a body lying on the shadowy road outside the school, crumpled like a rag doll that Nicki remembered owning as a child. The body was that of a slender woman, with long, brunette hair which was blowing in the early summer breeze as she lay apparently face down on the road... and that was when the full horror of the situation occurred to her.

* * *

It was a long, drawn out Friday afternoon, and Simon was enjoying his free periods sat at his desk with a cup of tea and a large packet of biscuits which he'd pilfered from the staff room, when he heard shouts erupting behind him in Nicki's next door classroom. He got up, when the shouts didn't subside after a couple of seconds, and walked to the door of his classroom, poking his head out and almost being killed by Nicki running past the him full-pelt, her hair flying everywhere as she turned and leapt down the stairs three-at-a-time, jumping down the bottom five or so and sprinting off, the heels on her boots making it sound as if a herd of horses had been let loose in the corridors. Seconds later, he saw her sprinting across the playground at a frankly incredible speed, her long legs working to power her towards the road where, he suddenly realised, a woman lay like a rag doll on the tarmac.

He slammed his mug down on his rickety wooden desk and, biscuit-in-mouth, legged it along the corridor after Nicki, struggling to breathe through a mixture of half-eaten Chocolate Hobnob and his state of fitness. He ran through the doors and out to the playground in a fashion he imagined elephants might do, seeing Nicki now kneeling on the cold tarmac, her dark hair covering her face from view as she bent over the woman's body in the road. He realised that he now wasn't the only one running towards her - Hector had abandoned his PE lesson, and even Sue had left her class to see what was going on.

"It's her daughter," Hector, who had reached the two women a couple of seconds before the others, rubbing a hand over his face, "She's been hit by a car."

* * *

She's almost forgotten how beautiful her daughter's eyes are since the last time she saw her. They're a beautiful kaleidoscope, just like Stuart's, of emerald green and amber, with a dark rim to the iris where it meets the white. Eve's eyes flicker open as Nicki kneels to her, crying her daughter's name in anguish as she takes her cold, shaking hand. It's bony, like hers, with long, spindly fingers, but where Nicki's nails are cut short and given a quick coat of clear polish, Eve's are long and elegant; pointed, finished with a shiny scarlet varnish which contrasts against her pale skin.

"Mum."

It is a simple word - one which she hasn't had much of an opportunity to hear said to her by her own daughter - and one which carries the whole world with it. It tells her that Eve is desperate. That she needs someone to hold her. And it tells her that the someone she wants is her mother. Perhaps, then, it finally hits her that this beautiful, vulnerable girl lain before her is her own flesh and blood.

"It's okay, darling, I'm here." she whispers, vaguely aware of voices behind her, but more so of the pool of blood that is starting to collect beneath Eve's head on the tarmac of the cold, shadowed street; her dark hair, which she left down and natural in its waves for once, stained yet darker on the crown of her head by the scarlet.

She feels Eve squeeze her hand - she's felt that before, from soldiers who needed a distraction from their agony, but she can't bear to think of that now - amidst the sounds of someone telling her that an ambulance is on its way, and the tense, hushed murmurs of the few students who've managed to escape from their lessons to watch the occurrences. She wants to scream at them all that this isn't a freak show or a circus, but she is drained by the tears silently flowing down her face and onto the tarmac, mingling with the blood coming from Eve, who by this point is totally out of it as sirens begin to wail around them, and paramedics and police officers fill the road around them.


	2. Chapter 2

_Thank you for the lovely reviews; it means so much to me to know that you enjoy my writing. I'm sorry if this chapter doesn't make total grammatical sense - English is my second language, and I haven't really spoken it over the past week, as we speak Irish at home! Also, this will be updated once or twice per week from now on as I'm back at school, and 5 A Levels don't study themselves! I'll update every Friday or Saturday from now on, as well as on Tuesdays or Wednesdays when I have time. Enjoy this chapter, and please leave a review! :) Aoife x_

* * *

She barely knows where she is - there's a crack of sunlight on her face, but the rest of her is cold - so cold - but for her hand, which she can feel her mother grasping as she whispers to her. She's knelt over her, the intoxicating scent of her spicy perfume all that Eve can sense in that moment as she lies on the cold, hard tarmac of the road. There are sirens now; accompanied by blue flashing lights and the voices of paramedics and police officers who hurry over to where Eve is, asking her mother questions that she can't answer through a mixture of her sobs and her lack of knowledge as to what has actually happened.

Before she knows it, there is a spinal board behind her and she's surrounded my medics ready to roll her onto it. She cries out as her mother loses her grasp on her hand, begging her to come back, and she sees the pain in her cornflower blue eyes as she watches her daughter reaching for the hand that isn't there. Eve hears the paramedics counting, and she panics, but it's too late - the pain is excruciating as they roll her onto the board, and she cries out again, like a wounded animal, in agony. She shouts for her mother, who comes running to her now that she isn't surrounded, and feels her grab her hands and kiss her bloodied hair. The perfume now acts like chloroform, and her vision blurs as she is wheeled into the ambulance backwards, and suddenly, everything is dark, the colours of the world around her fading to black.

* * *

She looked on helplessly as her daughter's vibrant eyes closed again, and the paramedics began hooking her up to devices which she didn't think she wanted to know the uses of. The sirens started up again as the ambulance pulled away, and the journey which no mother ever wanted to have to make began.

"What's her name?" asked a paramedic, and Nicki jumped at the sound of his voice jolting her back into her senses - somewhat, at least. He was tall and wiry, with short, steely grey hair and piercing blue eyes which, behind the bright hue, twinkle slightly in the light, as children remember their grandfathers' eyes, perhaps.

"Eve," she managed to gulp out between the tears she hadn't been aware were falling down her cheeks, "Well, Evelyn, but... Eve." she babbled, not entirely in control of what she was saying. The paramedic gave her a kindly smile, but she could see in his eyes that he wasn't really holding out much hope as he checked Eve's blood pressure, before radioing to the hospital with some medical terminology that she didn't understand, and probably didn't want to.

She heard them talking about something as they worked on Eve, their voices hushed, with the occasional worried glance thrown at Nicki. Her stomach dropped, whereas her heart felt as if it had leapt up into her throat, and she could feel it beating as if the world had slowed to near enough a standstill for those few seconds which felt like hours.

"I'm afraid we're going to have to take Eve straight into Intensive Care," the female paramedic told her gently, her soft accent that of Newcastle, like Maggie's, "We're very worried about her head, seeing as nobody knows how she landed... and she's very likely to slip into a coma."

The whole world stopped in that moment, and Nicki's face lost all expression as she nodded, her eyes blank. _They think she's dying_, she thought to herself, gulping back a sob as the ambulance veered round yet another corner at what may well have been either the speed of light or slow motion - she couldn't tell, as her mind totally blanked out. She was no longer holding her daughter's pale, fragile hand, so as the medics could work on her, and so she put her head in her hands, biting her bottom lip to try and refocus her mind, and succeeding only in drawing a drop of scarlet blood, which blended with the blood of her daughter on her hands. It was a horrible idiom, that, she thought - to have someone's indelible blood on your hands, for as long as you lived - and yet another sob escaped her now quaking body as she realised that, if Eve was to die tonight, everything would be her fault.

* * *

They'd asked her if she needed to call Eve's father, which was when it really hit her - and now, after ten minutes of procrastinating by way of perusing every vending machine she could find to put off the phone call that she didn't think she could manage to make, she had to do it.

Her phone had been left in her desk at school, but she has Eve's bag with her - she doesn't remember picking it up, but perhaps one of the paramedics did as they took her away - a large, burgundy suede and tan leather shoulder bag, which smells of Eve's vanilla perfume mixed with her shampoo; an blend which, once more, brings tears to her eyes. She rummages through the bag - clearly packed in a hurry, due to the way the clothes were crumpled - and eventually finds Eve's phone, buried amongst the clothes and toiletries she threw into the bag. Her heart almost stopped at the lock screen - it was a picture of her and Eve on Greenock's pathetic little beach on the one day of winter sunshine they'd had, and Nicki has to choke down her tears as she unlocks the phone, and after much confusion at the array of apps, finds her contacts.

She scrolls down the list - _Adam, Amy, Beth, Caleb, Cathy... Dad_. Her thumb hovers above the point on the touchscreen, and she gulps, terrified to press it, as if it were going to set a bomb off - but she does, somehow, and she brings the phone to her ear with her shaking right hand, biting her left thumbnail as it rings - _one, two, three_ times, before he answers;

"Eve?"

It's lucky that she's sat down, because her legs would probably have given out at the sound of Stuart's voice in her ear. She grasps the cream-painted metal of the chair she's sat on - it's cold, because she's sat by a set of those automatic doors that seem to remain constantly open for no apparent reason - but she can't speak, for her mind won't make up the simple sentence she needs to break the earth-shattering silence.

"Eve? Are you okay?" he asks, sounding worried now, and she doesn't know that she can bear to tell him that his little girl - their little girl - is in hospital, and that no, she doesn't know if she's going to be alright.

"It's Nicki." she tells him, choking on the words and struggling to breathe as another gust of wind blows through the doors.

"Nicki? What's wrong? Are you okay?"

She doesn't want to tell him that yes, she's fine, but that Eve isn't. She doesn't want to say anything - she was right; this was going to be the most difficult phone call she would ever, ever make. Even in the Army, it had been a little easier, because families did half expect something to happen when their loved one was fighting a war - but nobody expected a phone call like this.

"It's... it's Eve," she says, and she lets out a sob with her words, "She was hit by a car." She hears him drop something on the floor, even as she sobs - a glass or a mug, maybe - and hears it shatter into a million tiny pieces as he responds;

"Oh my God," he says, his voice almost devoid of anything but panic, "Where are you?"

"Inverclyde Hospital," she replies, her voice shaking, "They've taken her to Intensive Care, they think she'll slip into a coma... just... just please, come up here." She chokes out, now blinded by the river of hot, salty tears running down her freezing cold face, which she wipes away with her still bloodied hands, barely hearing him telling her that it's alright, that he's coming, as she curls up on the cold chair and waits - for what, she doesn't quite know - but nonetheless, she waits.


	3. Chapter 3

"Nicola Boston?" shouts a doctor, and she jumps out of her position curled up on the plastic coated cushion of the cold metal chair, desperate for some kind of distraction from the hell going on in her head. She's not entirely sure how long she's been there - minutes, hours... hell, it could have been days, and she probably wouldn't know.

"This way, please." he nods, and she gets up and follows him down a seemingly endless corridor, like a dog following its owner, but perhaps a little more pathetic. The doctor is middle aged - one of those serious men who travel into work with their clinical looking suits and briefcases, and appear to have very little personality to them behind the stethoscope and the clipboard - and probably about Nicki's height, or a little taller, with short, greying hair and olive toned skin. The heels of his expensive leather shoes click against the cold, hard floors of the corridors he leads her through, and, multiple sets of doors later, they arrive at an office at the end of a long ward, where the whirring and beeping of machines give out the only noise.

"Now, you're Evelyn's mother, yes?" he asks, taking the clipboard and pen and placing his glasses on the bony bridge of his nose. His accent is cut-glass, taken straight out of a public school and Oxbridge, and she hates it - the doctor is one of those people who clearly hasn't seen a council estate in his life, and believes that their inhabitants ought to be sterilized.

"Yes, and her dad's flying up from London... he'll be here soon." she tells him, more so to reassure herself than to give the consultant any relevant information.

"Right... shall I tell you now, or would you rather wait for her father?"

She gulps - _tell you now_. It sounds ominous, whether intentional or not, yet she's desperate for some kind of information, and so she says that she'll tell Stuart herself, and the consultant nods, sifting through his notes for a long moment before looking up at her, his dark eyes searching hers for something, before he spoke;

"Evelyn suffered multiple injuries when she was hit, the worst of which are injuries to her leg - the femur and tibia of her right leg are badly broken, and we're going to take her down to theatre the moment it's free so as we can fuse the bones using metal plates - the X-rays are behind me, where you can really see the full extent of the damage." He looks up at her for a moment, and she nods, with barely a glance at the X-rays, as if telling him to continue, though she knows that the news can only get worse from here;

"Although we don't know what exactly happened, we believe that she would have been thrown onto the bonnet by the impact, where she sustained injuries to her chest. Now, we don't think that the rib cage has been damaged, but her left lung has completely collapsed, so we're using artificial respiration to help the lung to heal - don't be alarmed when you see the machines; the lung should heal itself within, perhaps, a week."

"Do you know how long she'll be in for?" Nicki asks, gnawing at her already red raw thumb, then pressing her lips together and biting her tongue, dreading the response she will get.

"Well, that brings me onto Evelyn's more... severe injuries." he tells her, running a hand through his hair and completely evading her question, "She must have landed on the side of her head, which is obviously a severe trauma. According to a standard coma scale measurement, she's in a moderate to severe state, and we're going to monitor her very closely... we currently have a catheter to drain any excess fluid accumulating, and she's on a drip to keep her hydrated and reduce the swelling. We may well have to operate on her head, so we want you to prepare for that." he continues, still speaking as if he's reading from a textbook, "You can go and see her if you want, but she's on very strong painkillers, so she won't make much sense. The orthopaedic surgeon, Mr. Herriot, will be on his way up to talk to you about the operation - we're envisaging that theatre should be free in under half an hour, and should last a couple of hours, because the bones will have to be manipulated and pinned to ensure healing."

He nods over to where a young blonde nurse is stood at the door, and Nicki stands, her legs feeling weak as she makes her way over. The nurse's eyes are hazel, a little like Eve's, and kind; framed by dark lashes, and the irises have a sparkle to them in the dim light of the ward as she leads Nicki to a bed at the very end, where the last rays of sunlight shine through the windows as the nurse begins to open the curtains around the bed.

"Don't panic when you see her," she says in a Glaswegian accent, taking a deep breath, "It does look, in my experience, a lot worse than it really is."

That does very little to settle Nicki's nerves, and she stares out of the window at the sunset as the tears prick in her eyes. She hears the nurse walk off down the ward, her steps in time with the beeping of the heart rate monitor - she might have said something, but she can't be sure of it, because she's too busy trying to muster the strength to turn around and look at the girl in the bed behind her.

She finally manages to turn, and at the sight before her, she almost drops the heavy bag on her shoulder. Eve lies there, her already pale skin washed out by the bland colour of the hospital gown she's been dressed in. A blanket partially covers her, rather than the tight, claustrophobic sheets that are usually found in hospitals, because her right leg has been left uncovered, strapped into the correct position, though she can still see the breaks, where the bone has shifted, giving her leg an odd shape to it. She's attached to more machines than Nicki thinks she's ever seen in her life - monitors, drips, and something which is whirring away behind the bed, the purpose of which she'd rather not know.

"Mum."

Her voice is a weak croak; almost a whisper, and her eyes are very slightly open, but it is enough for Nicki to see the bloodshot whites against the emerald green irises, She rushes to her, taking her ice cold hand and kissing her lily white forehead, inhaling the scent of her and trying to keep the tears from falling; her breath hitching in her throat.

"Your dad's coming, but they want to take you to surgery for your leg, okay?" Nicki whispers hurriedly, dropping the bag to the floor with a thud as she stroked her daughter's freezing cheek with her thumb, the soft skin warming slightly at her touch.

"Don't go." she murmurs, holding onto her mother's hand with the little strength she has left in her, and her sharp nails dig into Nicki's palm slightly, leaving little indents when she shifts slightly.

"I'm not going anywhere," she chokes out to her daughter, tears welling up in her eyes which she gulps down to the best of her ability, "I'll be here when you wake up, I promise."

She knows that it'll be the first time she's kept that promise to her daughter - she never said anything to her when she left on that muggy night back in the 1990s when she'd abandoned her husband and baby girl in the spur of the moment. Some might say it had been without a backwards glance, but she'd done her fair share of glancing - gazing longingly, more like - back at what she's been stupid and selfish enough to leave behind.


	4. Chapter 4

_I'm sorry I haven't updated this week; I'm so busy at the moment it's unreal. Thank you for the couple of reviews I got on the last chapter - they mean the world, and I write much more quickly when I get a lot of reviews, so please leave one! :)_

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The nurses had run down the ward at the insistent beeping of one of the whirring machines attached to some part of Eve's slender body; surrounding the bed and shouting for the doctor as Nicki looked on helplessly, her face dampened by hot, salty tears which had pulled her jet black mascara down her lightly tanned skin with them. The doctor who'd spoken to her a few minutes ago was saying something hushed to the team of nurses, which Nicki couldn't bear to listen to.

Another two men were coming down the ward now, one in an expensive white shirt and black suit trousers, the other - a younger man - in blue scrubs, and carrying a clipboard. They broke into a jog as they neared Eve's bed, presumably realising the severity of her condition, and after nodding at Nicki quickly, spoke to one of the nurses hurriedly, before the consultant, whose name she still didn't know, ordered the younger man to help him with something. The older, suited man picked up the clipboard and turned to Nicki, his piercing eyes a bright, vibrant blue against tanned skin.

"Miss Boston?" he asked, though it was more of a rhetorical device, "I'm Mr. Herriot, I'll be leading the surgery on Evelyn's leg tonight."

"Eve," Nicki responded, her voice weak and shaking as she shook the surgeon's hand weakly, "She hates being called Evelyn."

"Eve," he nodded, smiling, his eyes suddenly warm, "My daughter's the same - I wonder why I bothered filling out the birth certificate sometimes." He had that rare talent for being able to inject some light into a dark, dark day; something which was found far too rarely in hospitals, and Nicki smiled as warmly at him as she could manage, although she probably still looked like a zombie - it was the thought that counted, perhaps.

"Right, well, you've seen the X-rays, so you know how bad the breaks are... I just have to talk to you about the risks of this surgery," he said, scrawling something on the clipboard he was holding, looking her in the eye for a moment as she gulped and nodded, "Obviously, there is the risk that, when we pin the bones into place, there could be some nerve damage, which is quite a small risk - it's not happened once in all the trauma surgeries I've done over the years. However, there's a much more significant risk that, when we use the anaesthetic, she could react badly. She's currently being put into a medically induced coma to reduce the damage to her brain, and we're going to continue to monitor her extremely closely during surgery, just in case we have to operate on her head."

"How long will the surgery take?" she managed to stammer out, blinking quickly to try and stop the tears which she could feel in peril of falling, to very little avail, as she felt a hot, salty tear fall, which she wiped away furiously. She'd always hated people seeing her cry - in fact, she could only think of one person, outside of her family, who'd ever really seen her break down - and that was Stuart, who, though she hated to admit she needed anyone at all, she really needed at this moment.

"If it's just her leg, then it should be a few hours, providing that there are no complications. But if we have to do anything to her head, it could be much, much longer - we'll keep you and Eve's father up to date as best as we can."

"Okay." she whispered as he handed her the clipboard, asking her to sign here if she's happy to proceed with the surgery, and understands the risks involved. She signed; a barely legible squiggle in ink which smudged as her hand rubbed across it slightly and a tear fell to the paper, despite her furious sniffing.

It was all a blur from then on - the anaesthetist saying something which she nodded vaguely at, then the sight which choked her; Eve, white as a sheet, now with a breathing mask over her slight face; her dark hair tied loosely into a bun by one of the nurses, with a few curly tendrils just escaping and falling around her face. The blood was dry now, with a couple of splatters across her cheekbones which nobody had the time to wipe off. All she'd wanted to do was tell her little girl that things were going to be okay - but not only was she unable to reach her through the crowd of doctors and nurses hurrying her out of the ward, but she didn't know if things would be okay.

So she curled up on a chair by the window - it was dark now, but she didn't have the faintest idea what time it was - and held her head in her hands, her body shaking as she exhaled, trying to keep the sobs from coming. She opened her eyes for a moment, glancing across to the empty space where Eve's bed had been, and noticed a book falling from the bag she'd dropped at the bedside earlier. _Look Back In Anger_ by John Osborne. She remembered Eve telling her that she was using it for her final piece of A Level English Literature coursework - there were various post-it notes of different colours on the pages, marking quotes and passages which she'd painstakingly sought out.

Nicki picked the slightly battered paperback up from the cold linoleum floor, beginning to thumb through the slightly yellowed pages, looking at the notes her daughter had written in her beautiful, feminine handwriting, and inhaling the slight scent of her daughter from the paper. Nicki herself had studied this text at university - she'd promised Eve that she'd help her with her essay, she remembered. The fact that she might not get to do that completely and utterly broke her.

She didn't know how long she sat there, curled up on the chair, holding the battered little book to her quaking chest as she sobbed, silently. Nurses flitted in and out of the ward, the machines beeping and whirring all the time, but she had no sense of time passing - she hadn't looked up once, because she knew she'd only work herself into a state if she had any semblance of knowledge as to how long the surgery was taking. She could hear the sound of footsteps coming towards her, but she remained curled up - she just couldn't bear to speak to anyone right now.

"Nicki?"


End file.
